Are You Shooting More or Less in the Lockdown?

[Robert M Estall]

looks like I couldn't send anything in just now as my internet connection is reporting 65 Mbps down load but zero upload. Curious to see if this comment goes anywhere

 

edit: seems to have worked

Edited May 14, 2020 by Robert M Estall

[David eastley]

we are safeguarding so can't really get out at the moment but am using the time to go through my images and do some new captions and keywords and quite a lot of deletions. Also going through lots of my old stuff and finding quite a few I missed and are uploading them

[Bill Allsopp]

As an over 70's landscape photographer a lot less BUT I have just refurbished a cove that has been unused in my garage for a while and have plans to make use of that.

[Thyrsis]

13 minutes ago, Bill Allsopp said:

As an over 70's landscape photographer a lot less BUT I have just refurbished a cove that has been unused in my garage for a while and have plans to make use of that.

 

Back in the commercial photography days we had a large coved studio. When the whole room was painted white it made you feel quite strange because you couldn’t tell where the floor ended and the wall started! Very disorientating! 

[Allan Bell]

47 minutes ago, Thyrsis said:

 

Back in the commercial photography days we had a large coved studio. When the whole room was painted white it made you feel quite strange because you couldn’t tell where the floor ended and the wall started! Very disorientating! 

 

Or the ceiling?   That is if the coving extended up that far.

 

Thinking aloud here. "Were the corners of the studio coved as well?

 

Allan

 

[Allan Bell]

I am shooting less, much less. The main reason being that I am having to wait 4 to 5 weeks for QC to pass,(or fail), a batch of images before I upload the next one so the whole thing is taking too long. In fact stopped shooting all together until more normal working QC times return.

 

Allan

 

[spacecadet]

Much less. No holiday in Split🙁

Except for the few in Epping Forest and the garden I'm putting up on the nature thread, but they're heavily manipulated so not really QC material.. Or Alamy material for that matter, it's the first pictorial stuff I've done for years, if not a decade or two. I don't really know what else to do with it.

[Alex Ramsay]

Probably more - no commercial work, of course, but I carry a camera more often than usual while out volunteering as I try to record life under lockdown in our very small town - which actually looks very similar to life here before lockdown

 

Alex

[Doc]

Hugely less - still missing the ability to travel. 

 

[IanDavidson]

I am both shooting less and shooting differently.  I am a news shooter -about 95%.  Before covid the vast majority of my photography and sales was Downing Street and Westminster.  A small amount of time covering local events that had some national relevance.  
 

Now there is little Westminster news.  My Downing Street photography is Raab, Hancock, Whitty and Cummings.  Nothing else much is happening in Westminster.  I have a Royal Parks Media Pass so I can photograph in the Royal Parks, but I am running out of ideas.  Because of the low volume of news I have dropped from my normal output of four to six stories per day in London to two.  As such it is not viable to go to London more than once or twice a week.  That is also linked to the risk issue, no, not Covid (I have had it quite mildly despite my age) but the aggression and threats  (no, not my wife on this occasion).  Although this has got better of late.  
 

I have much increased my local shooting and a little surprisingly, I have sold a reasonable number.  
 

We seem to be in an interregnum.  The restrictions have been eased, but still a low level of political activity that can be photographed.  I have canvassed for stories, local undertaker, key worker hotel etc but with no success.

 

i don’t know what the “new normal” is going to look like but I don’t think it will be good news for news shooters.... 

 

No one said it was going to be easy.

 

Ps Just today, a letter from Companies House about confirmation of company details that includes the requirement to pay a fee and an email from my financial advisor telling me HMRC are going to screw up the tax on my pension meaning I pay massively too much tax and it could take months to get the money back...  it never rains....

[Bionic]

I’m certainly shooting an awful lot less down to the simple fact that my wife and I are both still working flat out which we’re having to juggle with home schooling a primary age child and look after a 3 year old. As you can probably imagine it doesn’t leave a lot of time for much else

[Thyrsis]

4 hours ago, Allan Bell said:

 

Or the ceiling?   That is if the coving extended up that far.

 

Thinking aloud here. "Were the corners of the studio coved as well?

 

Allan

 

Three walls, floor, ceiling and yes, all the corners.

The cove was built with stud walls and ceiling and plywood formers in the corners.

It took  3 plasterers and 3 guys mixing to plaster the whole surface in one hit! 

Edited May 14, 2020 by Thyrsis

[Avpics]

I've been shooting more....locally, that's for sure. Less in total. Thankfully my local includes an airport, a hospital and a seafront so there's an amount of variation. 

 

To fill in the time I've been going through my old images from image number one to tweak the keywords using knowledge gained over the years, and bitten the bullet to correct the location fault in Alamy's software (as per https://discussion.alamy.com/topic/12520-location-filter-issue/  ) one at a time. Very OCD, but it plays on my mind knowing that there's an aspect of an image that could cause it not to sell.

 

Edited May 14, 2020 by Avpics

[digi2ap]

Zero new images but I do have lots of past images to post-produce. As a result I have set myself a modest target to get to 2000 images. 

[The Blinking Eye]

More. I have more time, and photography is one thing that I can keep doing. I live alone and have not seen most of my friends and loved ones in eight weeks so have to be careful about my mental health. Daily outings are crucial. Bringing a camera with me offers a sense of adventure and joy. I woke up before 7am this morning to photograph grazing goats that have recently moved into the neighborhood. I never had energy to do that kind of thing in my pre-corona life.

[Ed Rooney]

Chuck, since you’ve sold your 12-gage, I won’t worry about your disapproval. 

 

Here in the forum, we use conversational English. I often say “snaps” and “pics” in place of images or photographs. I do that partly to avoid sounding as if I’m discussing some high spiritual level of activity. Shooting pics and photo shoot are common everyday terms. I will continue to use them. Since I don’t give out red disapproval tags, it seems that others are unhappy with your silly attitude.

 

Right now I have a few real problems: my RX100/6 is out of order and there’s no WiFi in my building. I’m using up the last of my Personal Hotspot data to post this. Tomorrow the data will refresh. I’ll have to use my other Sonys to do my next photo shoot.

 

Edo

[Mr Standfast]

Taking a lot less pictures. The camera comes with me on my daily walk but if the opportunities are there I'm not seeing them. This will pass.

 

The making images or taking snaps label does not worry me. Lots of UK photographers refer to "snapping", it might sound cheesy but their pictures speak for them. However standing behind a person in a cafe who uses the phrase "Can I Get?" has me reaching for the metaphorical bold font. I guess it just depends on what winds you up.

 

Stay safe

[John Mitchell]

I flinch when I read photography articles with titles like "How to shoot kids" or "How to shoot seniors" (even scarier to me because I am one 🙁).

 

However,  "shooting" and "photo shoot" are so common that that it's not worth getting one's knickers in a knot over IMO. After all, photography can be like hunting. Street photographers especially are hunters without guns (hopefully).

 

That said, I would prefer "How to photograph children" to "How to shoot kids (baby goats?)" and something like "photo session" to "photo shoot". But then I still say "May I have?" rather than "Can I grab?", which of course makes me an old fogy.

 

 

 

 

Edited May 15, 2020 by John Mitchell

[Bryan]

Looking after 4 greenhouses, our garden at home and 1.5 allotments (owner on lockdown), so very little time for photography at present. With a lifting of some of the covid restrictions, we cycled the short distance to the coast yesterday and, uniquely, I didn't bother taking the camera. A mobile phone shot made it on to Facebook., but it being Android, I can't upload to Alamy via Stockimo.

[spacecadet]

I wouldn't tend to use the term for still photography, but in my other life in the film industry I don't know what else you could possibly call the process of acquiring moving images. An individual recording of a scene is a shot. It's as simple as that- there's nothing else to call it.

[The Blinking Eye]

I live in the good ol' USA and murder has never once crossed my mind when I hear the word "shooting" for a photograph.

 

However, there is bulk of film theorists who align filmmaking with gunfire. In studies of Third World Cinema, there are Latin American theorists and filmmakers, in particular, who equate shooting film with shooting a gun. This is the operating metaphor for creating revolutionary cinema, film frames akin to bullets. The idea is anti-Hollywood and anti-American product, where US export of movie blockbusters imposes colonialist mindset upon underdeveloped nations worldwide.

 

And then there's Robert Breer, experimental filmmaker and creator of what's called  "rapid-fire montage". He built short films with single frames of wildly different imagery to create intense and dense visual experiences.

[John Mitchell]

20 minutes ago, The Blinking Eye said:

I live in the good ol' USA and murder has never once crossed my mind when I hear the word "shooting" for a photograph.

 

However, there is bulk of film theorists who align filmmaking with gunfire. In studies of Third World Cinema, there are Latin American theorists and filmmakers, in particular, who equate shooting film with shooting a gun. This is the operating metaphor for creating revolutionary cinema, film frames akin to bullets. The idea is anti-Hollywood and anti-American product, where US export of movie blockbusters imposes colonialist mindset upon underdeveloped nations worldwide.

 

And then there's Robert Breer, experimental filmmaker and creator of what's called  "rapid-fire montage". He built short films with single frames of wildly different imagery to create intense and dense visual experiences.

 

Interesting. During the early 1930's, Henri Cartier-Bresson apparently hunted game in Africa. He eventually tired of the "sport" and picked up a camera instead. HCB later attributed much of his success as a street photographer to skills that he had learned as a hunter.

Edited May 15, 2020 by John Mitchell

[The Blinking Eye]

10 minutes ago, John Mitchell said:

 

Interesting. During the early 1930's, Henri Cartier-Bresson apparently hunted game in Africa. He eventually tired of the "sport" and picked up a camera instead. HCB later attributed much of his success as a street photographer to skills that he had learned as a hunter.

 

I love that. I can see the parallels, like patience, precision, observation and knowing when to shoot.

 

Also, a lot of camera technology was developed by the US military for war recording purposes in the early 20th century. So the history of camera machinery and war are inextricably linked.

[sb photos]

9 hours ago, John Mitchell said:

 

Guns aren't on most people's minds in Canada, especially in urban areas, so we are probably more similar to the UK than to the US in that respect (I'd rather not go there). Gun ownership in Canada is highly restricted and associated mainly with hunting, not with personal protection. Personally, I'm not a hunter, and I don't enjoy killing animals, not even insects. However, I think that hunting is in our (human) DNA, so a parallel can be made between "shooting" with a camera and hunting with a weapon. I admit, though, that it's a tenuous theory at best. 😬

 

I can only remember one piece of photo kit from the 1960's with a similarity to weapon shooting, the Zenit Photosniper with the Tair 300mm lens, see http://camera-wiki.org/wiki/Zenit_Photosniper

 

It's a wonder no one was ever shot through carrying or using one, especially when you consider Londoner Harry Stanley was shot dead by armed police in 1999 when carrying a table leg mistaken for a gun.

Edited May 16, 2020 by sb photos

[Harry Harrison]

6 hours ago, John Mitchell said:

HCB later attributed much of his success as a street photographer to skills that he had learned as a hunter.

Good connection, seems he wasn't shy of using any shooting analogies himself, at least in this 1971 interview with Sheila Turner-Seed, and for me it shows how parallels between shooting pictures and, er, guns, are inevitable.

 

"Very often, you don’t have to see a photographer’s work. Just by watching him in the street, you can see what kind of photographer he is. Discreet, tiptoes, fast or machine gun. Well, you don’t shoot partridges with a machine gun. You choose one partridge, then the other partridge. Maybe the others are gone by then. But I see people wrrrr, like this with a motor. It’s incredible, because they always shoot in the wrong moment."

 

"But as for me, I enjoy shooting a picture. Being present. It’s a way of saying, “Yes! Yes! Yes!” It’s like the last three words of Joyce’s “Ulysses,” which is one of the most tremendous works which have ever been written."

 

 https://lens.blogs.nytimes.com/2013/06/21/cartier-bresson-there-are-no-maybes/

 

Actually today, almost 50 years on, it's the use of 'he' to describe a photographer rather than anything about shooting that could seem insensitive on the page, not that he would have dreamt of showing any disrespect to women photographers.